


Five Times Scully Called Mulder "Fox" And A Thousand Times She Didn't

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Names, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 01:32:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5689429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fox Mulder is an absurd name from start to finish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Scully Called Mulder "Fox" And A Thousand Times She Didn't

1\. 

In the car, the very first time: "Fox," she says, gently, hesitantly, and "Mulder," he corrects her, and feels a twinge. He called her "Dana" when her father died, the same impulse toward intimacy. They mean something to each other; he needs her by his side, but holds her at arm's length.

But she accepts his correction, and still tells him she wouldn't put herself on the line for anyone else, and he could love her for just that, just for calling him "Mulder" when his given name has been a joke his entire life. For understanding that he doesn't want to be Fox anymore. 

∞.

His name from her lips is a lullaby, is a warning, is an omen, is an alarm. He would know her voice in a crowd of thousands, he thinks, if she only said his name. "Mulder," she says, and her voice is warm or icy or calls him to the hunt or pulls him close. 

He lied, of course, all those years ago. Everyone else calls him "Fox". His parents, Diana, his former partners. The only people who always call him Mulder are Scully and the Gunmen, and Skinner unless he's drunk. With Scully, he's someone else, someone new. 

Fox Mulder is an absurd name from start to finish. He's been Moldy and Muldo and Muldoon, Fox and Foxy and Fuck-You. Maybe, he thinks, he should have started going by William, but it didn't seem to matter until Samantha was gone, and after that, he was always waiting to hear her again. But Scully calls to him and his name makes sense. Mulder sounds reasonable when she measures out the syllables. 

"Mulder," she says, and his name is an incantation that could bring him back from the grave.

2\. 

She calls him "Fox" at the wedding. It would be too wearisome to explain to the Justice of the Peace, he thinks, and it is, in any occasion, his legal name. 

"I take you, Fox Mulder, to be my lawfully wedded spouse," she says, and there's a quirk of her eyebrow he might have missed if he weren't fluent in her microexpressions. She's amused, and he wants to tell her that if he flinched, it was only for the unaccustomed flick of Fox before the round sound of Mulder. 

She doesn't take his name. That feels right, but he can't deny a moment of wistfulness for the thought of the two of them united, flaunting their solidarity to the world. The Mulders. Dr. Mrs. Fox Mulder. It would be a redemption of sorts for his infamous surname. But nevermind: one and one are still two, and still one, and words have never been able to put a wedge between them.

3\. 

"Oh, Fox," she says once as he buries his face hungrily between her thighs, and he thinks it's an accident, but context is everything. He likes the heat of his name then, the urgency, the roughness of it on her tongue. 

4.

"Fox," she says sharply, and he's ignored her for a good half hour, but his head jerks up at that, his eyes slipping from the screen of his computer to her face (weary, irritated, a face for a funeral she doesn't want to attend). 

"Dana," he replies, his voice tinged with sarcasm. 

"I'm leaving," she tells him, as if the suitcases weren't clue enough. He's a trained investigator. He noticed their slow slide away from each other, to opposite ends of their small house. He noticed their orbits becoming more and more erratic, him easing into bed an hour before she had to get up.

"Okay," he says. 

"Is that all you have to say?" she asks.

He shrugs. "I don't think there's anything that could change your mind at this point."

"There is," she says, but then she's gone.

"Dana," he says to the empty room.

5\. 

She looks him in the eye and calls him "Fox", and the name sounds easy in her mouth, as if she's practiced it, as if she's never called him anything else. "I've missed you, Fox." Her eyes are gentle. 

A sea change, he thinks. A renegotiation. She will not let him hold himself apart. He is no longer the rebel without a cause. He will not insist on last names as a way to preserve the independence he imagined he had. The only thing his stubbornness bought him was misery; hating his name gave authority to the people who used it against him. It has to be different this time. Scully - Dana - will never punish him with his name. 

"Dana," he says, and the taste of the vowels is as warm and comforting as coffee. She smiles. 

"It's nice to meet you," she teases.

"I feel like we've known each other forever," he says.

"Hmm," she says. "How do you feel about 'til death do us part?"

"Not even death," he says, taking her hand.


End file.
